I was nervous as hell when I heard the door squeak open. She was home. I wiped my hands on the dish towel and came around the corner, smiling as she dragged her bag in behind her.
"Welcome home." I took her bag and gave her a soft kiss, shivering when her arms went around me. For a few seconds, we forgot about time and enjoyed the warmth of each other's mouths and the caresses of each other's tongues. I pulled myself away and pushed her bag under the entry table, then reached for her raincoat. "How was the flight?"
"Easy, boring and unbearable."
"Unbearable? Why?"
"You know why." She grinned, tugging a small purple envelope out of her pocket. "You were very sneaky ... "
"Never said I wasn't." I hung up her coat. "So, how do you like the house?"
I watched her size up the entry way and glance into the front room. "Looks very nice. How about a tour?"
"Thought you'd never ask." There was another fifteen minutes remaining until the Cornish hens were done so I poured us glasses of Woodbridge chardonnay and gave her the grand tour. The front sitting room, Mom's parlor, the dining room and den, the kitchen and the mudroom in the back. Up the stairs and we waltzed through the master bedroom and its bathroom, my bedroom, another bathroom and the screened-in balcony.
"It's beautiful, Tawnya."
"And it's all ours." I grabbed her hand, weaving our fingers together. "Come on. Dinner's ready."
Dinner was great. Between bottles of wine, we ate garlic-roasted Cornish hen, pecan wild rice with mango ribbons and butter-basted white creamer potatoes and finished with cinnamon praline ice cream. For the first time, Alisa opened up to me, telling me about her lonely childhood and her climb up the ladder. If I hadn't already fallen in love with her, I was definitely there after learning more about her. She was interesting as well as vulnerable, beautiful as well as flawed and I was hooked even more.
"Ready for a bath?"
I ran a bath for her and prepared the rest of the night's activities as she luxuriated in the perfumed water. Thirty-five minutes later, I heard the drain gurgle and knew she was getting out of the tub. Now, it was time to fulfill her fantasy. Time to make her mine.
When she opened the door to our bedroom, I was waiting, seated on a single chair and dressed in the style of tuxedo that Marlene Dietrich had posed for in a still for